Things Only the Fourth Hokage Can Do

"So this is the little tool you said would help me train?"

Sasuke Uchiha stared at the light bulb in front of him with dead-fish eyes, the corner of his eye twitching. He had no idea where Nakamori Wu Yu had dismantled it from in his house.

"Don't you think it's ingenious?"

Wu Yu connected a copper wire to the bulb and handed it to Sasuke. "As long as your Chakra can light up this bulb and bring it to maximum brightness, wouldn't that mean your Lightning Nature Transformation has been completely mastered?"

"..."

Sasuke Uchiha took the bulb and copper wire, stunned. "Why are you helping me?"

"Because I'm a great guy!"

Wu Yu ran to the other side, dug up a clump of dried mud, and tossed it in his hand. "Besides, I really want to know—if you stay in Konoha, can you actually clear the whole thing?"

If I stay in Konoha? Did I ever say I was leaving Konoha?

Sasuke Uchiha could not understand Wu Yu's way of thinking.

Wu Yu sat on the ground and pressed both palms against the dried clod of earth. "I'm going to train my water attribute now. You should get busy too."

"..." Watching Wu Yu immerse himself in training, Sasuke suddenly thought, He finished Fire Style Jutsu in the morning and is continuing with Water Release this afternoon? Maybe this so-called nature transformation isn't as difficult as I imagined...

With that thought in mind, Sasuke Uchiha gripped the copper wire and trained hard until nightfall. Staring at the bulb, which had not lit up even a fraction throughout the entire afternoon, he finally realized just how terribly wrong he had been.

It was not that nature transformation training was too easy.

It was that Nakamori Wu Yu was simply not human...

If his Fire Style Jutsu had not relied on the innate talent inherited through the Uchiha Clan bloodline, then his training speed would probably have been far inferior to Wu Yu's as well...

In the darkness, Sasuke Uchiha's hand around the copper wire slowly clenched tighter.

Then he heard a voice behind him. "It's late. You still have the Genin team assignment briefing tomorrow, so you should get some rest. I should head home too."

After hearing Nakamori Wu Yu leave, Sasuke Uchiha silently rose after a while and went to where Wu Yu had been training. Then his foot suddenly gave way—he had stepped into a patch of sludge and sunk into it.

"...?!"

Sasuke Uchiha looked down. Under the moonlight, the mud across an open space of roughly ten square meters had somehow turned completely to mush, as though it had been soaked by a flood!

"In one day, not only Fire Style Jutsu—even the nature transformation for Water Release too..."

Sasuke Uchiha's pupils shook violently.

After spending more than a day with him, Sasuke already knew that Nakamori Wu Yu's Chakra reserves were actually rather ordinary, only about half of his own. This afternoon, while training nature transformation, Wu Yu had had to stop and rest every so often because he had run out of Chakra... Even so, he still...

"What Uchiha Clan genius... What a joke..."

"I'm so jealous of the Uchiha Clan. So much Chakra... and the Senju, and the Uzumaki..."

Early the next morning, Wu Yu woke up in his apartment, stretched lazily, and muttered to himself as he got out of bed. He stepped over the scattered Tsunade Scrolls on the floor and sleepwalked toward the sink to brush his teeth and wash up. "Of course, what I envy most is that big barrel... Glug glug glug... ptooey!"

Mysterious Kaguya's face appeared in the mirror. "It's Otsutsuki..."

Whoosh!

After washing his face until he felt refreshed, Wu Yu patted his cheeks. "All right, time to become a Genin! I can't avoid it this year. I wonder which team I'll be assigned to..."

[Wu Yu, why do you insist on becoming a Genin?] Jade Rabbit asked curiously from within him.

[I need to make money, my Little Jade!] On the water's surface of his mental world, Wu Yu vigorously ruffled Jade Rabbit's head until she giggled. [I'm not like you—I can't go without food and drink while staying full of energy...]

By the time Wu Yu arrived at the Ninja Academy, quite a few people were already in the classroom. This year's graduates, who had received their forehead protectors, were noisily chatting and laughing while the teacher had yet to arrive.

As usual, Wu Yu found an empty corner. He glanced at Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uzumaki, and Sakura Haruno, who were bickering with each other nearby, wondering whether Naruto and Sasuke had kissed again this time.

Wu Yu closed his eyes to rest and waited for Iruka to announce the team assignments.

"So this is Naruto's home?"

Inside Naruto Uzumaki's apartment, the silver-haired Kakashi Hatake picked up a carton of milk from the table and examined it. It had been expired for quite some time. A boy that age living alone—if left to himself, his place would eventually turn into a doghouse...

"That kid is a bit slow on the uptake, so I can only leave him in your care." The Third Hokage lowered the brim of his Hokage hat. "Also, among the students in your team, there is the orphan of the Uchiha Clan..."

What a pain! Kakashi Hatake's uncovered right eye instantly became dead-fish-like.

"Besides that, there's another very special child..."

The Third Hokage held his pipe and exhaled a puff of bluish smoke, recalling his conversation with Tsunade two nights earlier.

His beloved disciple, whom he had not seen in a long time, had come to visit him—only to ask him to help seal a "Sage Art Tailed Beast" that she had accidentally encountered while traveling the ninja world and absorbed into her body. The old man had been worked nearly to the point of falling apart; the Four Symbols Seal was no simple Fuinjutsu.

Not only that, Tsunade had said that because of a Chakra resonance, this Sage Art Tailed Beast had also appeared within her newly accepted disciple. So she needed him to prepare an additional Four Symbols Seal stored in a scroll.

Already drenched in sweat from exhaustion, the Third Hokage had felt like he was about to ascend to heaven after helplessly making another Four Symbols Seal scroll...

"When I borrow Haotu's Sage Power, my sensory abilities are greatly enhanced."

Tsunade put away the Four Symbols Seal scroll, stepped onto the windowsill, and suddenly brought something up before leaving. "Minato and Kushina's child clearly isn't an Uzumaki with red hair, so his aptitude should be quite ordinary. Yet he possesses an enormous amount of Chakra far beyond what someone his age should have! Old man, what's going on?"

She stared at the Third Hokage and shamelessly held out her hand as though asking for money. "Could it be that, during the years I was away, the village developed some special technique for improving one's physique?"

"At your age, and you're still indulging in fantasies!"

The Third Hokage was speechless. Wiping away his sweat, he took two puffs from his pipe, then slowly recovered and said in an unhurried tone, "Tsunade, why do you think Minato sealed the Nine-Tailed Fox inside his own newborn child?"

The old man answered his own question. "On the night of the Nine-Tailed Fox attack twelve years ago, Minato must have discovered something... That was why he sealed the Nine-Tails within his son, Naruto Uzumaki, believing Naruto would surely be able to master the Nine-Tails' power and shoulder the future!"

"Trusting an Uzumaki without red hair?" Tsunade sneered. "Only members of the Uzumaki Clan with exceptional talent, born with powerful Chakra, possess that vivid red hair. Kushina was like that, and so was my grandmother, Mito Uzumaki. The Fourth Hokage should have understood how ordinary that child was the moment he saw that his child had not inherited Kushina's red hair. Placing such a heavy responsibility on an untalented child without authorization was irresponsible."

The Third Hokage puffed on his pipe and said evenly, "Tsunade, I should have taught you how important spiritual will was to a ninja... Still, you aren't wrong. The moment Minato saw Naruto's blond hair, he naturally realized the child's innate shortcomings. That was why, on top of Naruto's Four Symbols Seal, he added another layer of the Four Symbols Seal—to continuously convert the Chakra leaking from the Nine-Tailed Fox into Naruto's own Chakra..."